Quentin Coldwater's page

(I GMed tier 7-8.)

This is a great special, with lots of variety. I love that this special isn't just combats, but more about skill checks and roleplay encounters. Older specials (especially in PF1 days) were just a grindfest of combat after combat, so having some time for creativity is very welcome.

My only complaint is from the GM side of things. Some encounters feel really fleshed out (the haunt especially!), but some other ones barely have any description, or give the players very little to go on. That might've been my failing as a GM, but I could really do with some more description to liven up the scene, and my players really felt that. I'm guessing it's due to word count, as setting up a combat encounter is much easier than describing a skill challenge, but some of the encounters just felt a little under-developed.

I really liked this special. It flowed well, had a good variety of encounters, and was generally well-written (especially box text). Very fun to play!

(I GMed this.)

I really like the premise of the scenario, especially the dungeon in the middle. The execution is a bit flawed and could be improved upon, but it's doing something different, and it's done competently.

The semi-free-form dungeon part is interesting and I'd like to see more of it. When I prepped it, it sounded like a great part, but while running it, I noticed it fell a little flat. Like the reviewer below me said, it feels more like rats in a maze, rather than an "explore at your own pace" type thing. But I see potential in this and I'd like to see more of this, if refined a little.

At my particular table, we had a high number of challenge points, which meant a LOT more enemies. Scaling adds a lot more low-level enemies, rather than buffing existing enemies. The combat was simultaneously crowded and underwhelming, as the enemies simply didn't pack much of a punch, even in numbers.

I did really like the randomisation tables, those were fun. More of this, please! It adds a little character to the scenarios, even if tracking it becomes slightly more difficult.

Still, I give it a good rating, since I still feel good about the scenario.

(I GMed this in low tier.)

This is a wonderful scenario. The author has a reputation for imaginative, quirky scenarios, and this one does not disappoint. The scenario has nice touches that make it memorable and evocative.

There are a few narrative hiccups that mar the story slightly, but not as much that it influences my final score. What does ding it somewhat is in the repeatable nature of this scenario. Writing repeatables is hard, and the author did an amazing job with multiple variable locations, bosses, and encounters, but I would have liked to see a little more variation in creatures to make it worth replaying.

The other downside is that some combat encounters feel a little underwhelming (at least, in low tier). They're over a little too quickly for my tastes. Maybe that changes with different challenge point adjustments and/or high tier, but at base challenge, some enemies just don't pack as much a punch as I'd like.

One of my players did comment that it was nice to see such a variety of skills being useful. Most adventures tend to have a good mix of skills, but upon reflection, I agree. A lot of obstacles, if not all of them, had a wide range of skills to solve them, without contriving weird reasons to do so. This really helped all players to meaningfully contribute at the table.

All in all, a great time.

Played this with Monkhound, see below.

Great fun adventure, with evocative pregenerated characters. I love the detailed backstory and "how to play" instructions each pregen got, really helps you inhabit the character. Characters are also well-made and fun to play.

All in all, this adventure is very evocative and makes good use of the setting, and the love and attention the pregens get is commendable.

Usually my standards for APs are pretty low. As long as they have some story relevance and cool encounters, I'm happy. But this whole volume felt like it could've been one or two levels at most.

Chapter 1 is completely unrelated to the plot. Normally it's related to the gates, which is fine. But no, here you're dropped in a desert with no story relevance because... stuff. Plus, it includes a culturally insensitive creature that's been reflavoured so much it doesn't make sense anymore.

Chapter 2 is the meat of the matter, including a heist mechanic that's overly complicated and takes too much time and word count. Pretty much every book has some sidequests to fill the gaps, but this is just too much.

Chapter 3 doesn't make sense narratively, and my players immediately poked several holes in it and offered alternative routes how this could've gone. The only saving grace is the very tiny little bit of plot relevance that makes this entire book worth playing.

All in all, this whole book felt like filler, and it felt more like filler than most filler books. If I were to do this AP again, I would either homebrew something myself that has nothing to do with Katapesh, or skip it entirely.

(I GMed this.)

This is a weird scenario. It does a whole lot of scene setting and environment building, but has very little payoff. The GM talks a lot, and the players actually do very little. Combats are almost a joke, with woefully unchallenging enemies that stand no chance of surviving, or even putting a dent in the players.

The actual story is pretty cool, but things just seemingly happen without the players's input and it feels more like the players are being talked at than talked to. It feels a bit like a necessary bit to move the Arcadia plot forward without making it a satisfying story on its own.

Would be two stars, maybe even one, but the cool lore is a good read that makes it entertaining enough to be worth playing.

(I GMed this.)

This is a bit of a weird scenario, especially for the GM. The (back)story isn't told well and there's information hidden in the page that could be clearer. Rooms are described that could've used a map, or at least a minimap for the GM to give a clearer picture of where the players are.

Aside from that though, I really like this scenario. The final combat can be dangerous as other reviewers have said, but both me and my players really liked the mechanics of it, which made it sort of a puzzle encounter rather than a generic fight. More of this, please!

(I GMed this.)

I completely agree with pauljathome's first sentence (see below). This is a decent module, but it is exactly as much fun as you make it. The module starts strong, but after the first part only becomes straight up fights with little to no RP. And even in the first part, there are just too many oozes. At some point, they aren't interesting enemies anymore.

I wish I had more to say about this, but it's a straightforward module. There's nothing wrong with it, apart from some painful fights, but there also isn't anything that really stands out.

(I GMed this at tier 1-2.)

This is one of the blandest specials I've ever ran/played. There's barely any story or RP, it's just "go in and kill stuff." There's barely any skill challenges, even. So with a scenario that's 90% combat, you'd better hope the combat's good, right? Nope. Maybe it's because I ran at tier 1-2 and perhaps the other tiers are better, but at this tier, enemies were very weak and underwhelming. Encounters felt really safe and I didn't get the feeling my players were in any danger at any point during the adventure. I honestly ran out of enthusiasm halfway through.

I'll give it two stars because it's functional and nothing outright bad, but there's nothing to actually recommend it.

(I GMed this.)

I love the atmosphere of this scenario. The location, the art, the ambiance, it's all very evocative. Major bonus points for that.

There's four big downsides, though. First, since it's part of this year's metaplot, you really only get a slice of a story here. Without knowledge of the story that's gone before, you'll be completely lost. I feel like other scenarios do a better job of telling self-contained stories.

Second, even though you have free reign to explore the island, the adventure assumes you do things in a very particular order, and that order might not be immediately clear. I equated it to old point and click game logic, where you can't progress unless you use item F on object R to unlock door J, which is in another room altogether. Okay, it's not that bad here, but my players kept trying to do things that weren't possible at the time, despite it seeming plausible.

Third, combats feel bad, IMHO. In both tiers the enemies mostly consist of debuffers that just make combat miserable. One or two are okay, but if the entire enemy team consists of things that force saves, it's gonna be a slog. This is mostly due to CP scaling, where more players means more identical creatures get added.

My fourth complaint is technically a spoiler.

The scenario starts great and does some cool stuff, but it manages to sabotage itself in several ways, ensuring that I could not keep up the enthusiasm for long.

(I GMed this for Monkhound below.)

This scenario lives or dies by its GM. I'm glad I managed to pull it off well. This is very much a spiritual successor to the Frostfur Captives form PF1. If you're familiar with that one, you know what you're going to get here.

A few minor complaints:
- The combats felt underwhelming. It didn't help that I rolled like crap, but the enemies in general felt unspectacular. In this tier I expect some interesting stuff from the enemies, but they're mostly just straightforward melee combatants.
- The same skills are being used throughout the scenario. There's usually a decent amount of options, but if you don't really have face skills, you'll be sitting a lot of this scenario out. A bigger variety of skills would've been nice, IMHO.
- From the GM's perspective, there's a LOT going on under the hood. Lots of modifiers being thrown around and information is all over the page.

I did really like the variety in situations this scenario throws at you. Tasks felt different from each other, and even combats had some nice twists to them. Definitely not a "clobber everything until it stops moving" kind of thing.

Definitely recommend this scenario, though depending on your GM, it could vary between two and five stars.

(I both GMed and played this scenario.)

This is a good dungeon crawl. Nothing super exciting, but if you want to bash in skulls for a few hours, this is a good scenario to pick. But that's about it. There's a few skill checks to make things interesting, but there's barely any roleplaying to be done and narratively it falls a little flat. It has the typical "second part in a trilogy"-problem, where you have to build on what came before, but also need to set up the final(?) part, and therefore can't really stand on its own. There's a few cool setpieces here, but the conclusion fell a bit flat for me.

Behind the scenes, as a GM, everything's set up really well. No editing mistakes, everything is clear and the final boss has clear instructions on what to do. I like that. I hadn't heard of the author before, but if this is their first work, very well done! I've seen much worse.

All in all, it's a good scenario, but nothing really excites me about it. My players did agree it was a good dungeoncrawl, but I wish it had a little bit more pizzazz.

(I played this, together with Sebastian below.)

This scenario feels like it's almost "there," but there's some elements that keep it back.
The setup is great, but once the cat is out of the bag, it's a standard straightforward adventure where most of the attention went into the setup, but not really the payoff.
The characters are definitely built more for style than for effectiveness. They also lacked a bit of synergy between them. The Rogue can debuff Reflex saves, but no other class targets Reflex with their spells or abilities. The spellcasters have questionable spells. They're serviceable, but I feel like they could've packed a little more oomph. Also, no Striking weapons really hurt, I feel. Especially with the final boss.
Two encounters feel out of whack. As mentioned, the lack of Striking weapons doesn't help, but the enemies feel unnecessarily tough compared to the casters. It was a real scramble here and there. Which is exciting, but can also make you feel hopeless.

Also, like Sebastian said, the Roll20 module had some errors in it that you need to look out for. Spells that have their damage output/DCs messed up can happen through importing, that I can forgive, but several feats were given to the wrong character, and some details were missing on the sheet entirely.

All in all, I'm not as harsh on it as the reviewer below me, but I do feel like this scenario could've been better.

(I GMed this.)

First of all, I must say that I don't agree with the reviewer below me. None of the enemies are scripted to start next to the players and all of the traps have Perception DCs. I think Kurald Galain's experience won't be the experience most people will have.

Other than that, it's a nice scenario. Nothing mind-blowing, but there's a nice variety of enemies, and the NPCs are fun to interact with.

No real complaints, other than that the adventure feels rather mediocre. Nothing wrong with that, just that in the end, it's not very memorable.

(I GMed this.)

While prepping this, I had a constant feeling of weirdness. There's something off about this scenario, and I couldn't put my finger on it. After playing it, I think I know why. It features an old location and characters from the novels. In fact, this whole scenario is basically a parade for Paizo's past. It really feels like everything is bent and twisted to make it fit this premise, which doesn't allow it to stand on its own. There's a weird "planning meeting" just to ensure a specific thing happens, a character pops up and shows how cool they are, and lots of references to this location from an old, old AP. Way too much time went into these parts and not enough into the rest of the scenario. The villain's motivation and backstory is basically unknown, combat encounters feel off, and half of the locations on the maps are unused because they're not relevant to the plot.

A small rant on the combat encounters. It feels like this scenario was originally meant for a lower tier and then just scaled up, without much thought put into them. Level 0 creatures in tier 3-4? Why? Most of them honestly feel like they come from a spicy 1-2 tier, rather than a normal 3-4. Enemies have ridiculously low HP and AC, and the author's fix to higher CP is to just throw more at the players, rather than beefing up the existing creatures. More mooks does not make a fight more interesting if they can barely damage the players.

Running it was surprisingly fun, though. There's some cool moments in here, if you can overlook the previous complaints. It might be better on the player side, but as a GM, I was disappointed.

I don't know how to rate this. As I said, my players and I had fun, but I think there's enough bad stuff under the surface that I can't completely recommend this scenario.

(I GMed this.)

Okay, yes, the secondary prestige condition sucks. It's not great.

With that out of the way, this scenario starts strong, but by the halfway mark, loses a lot of steam. It feels a bit to me, as a GM, as if it missed a bit of polish. Especially the second half is mostly empty rooms with a skill challenge. I found it difficult to make engaging. Luckily my players rolled with it and had fun.

I like the roleplay encounter in the middle. It allows for some cool imagery and creativity from the players.

All in all, I'd rate this three stars as-is. A good GM might elevate it to four, but it certainly has the potential to fall flat, I feel.

(I GMed this.)

I really like this scenario. It has a lot of cool moments that make you excited to have played it. There's a nice mix of combats and a bit of roleplay, and cool setpiece moments that make use of the environment you're in. Might even be five stars for me.

One downside is that I honestly find the repeatable aspect a bit lacking. There's a little bit of variety, but if you've played this twice, you've literally seen everything. That doesn't scream "repeatable" to me.

A thing I really liked though is the fact that underwater combat is less of a headache than in PF1. The Society even provides some basic means to mitigate most of the downsides of it, so that's a feel-good moment.

(I played this.)

In all honesty, I don't like adventures like this. It's mostly the storyline that feels like three separate miniquests glued together, with only the location tying them together. It feels more like busywork than an actual adventure. I did like the diplomacy-part being split among two groups, so you can't just let one person do all the talking. That was a neat little thing, IMHO.

The location feels a bit odd, suddenly being on Arcadia without much fanfare, and honestly, not much is done with it. Like another reviewer said, this feels like it could've taken place anywhere. But I guess it advances Sveinn Blood-Eagle's plot, which will become relevant later.

Combats felt pretty good. While not super exciting, they offered a surprising challenge, so props for that.

Overall, while I don't really like the structure of this adventure, I really can't find any faults in it. I'm not super excited by it, but it does what it set out to do really well. I just wish the location was explored a bit more.

(I played this.)

After the mediocre start of this series, it luckily ended on a strong note. While there are some flaws in this scenario, it also has enough high points that I overall judge it as a positive experience.

The story is a bit flat, especially as the capstone of this series, but that's compensated by good exploration. Maybe it's just good improvisation on the GM's part, but we had the feeling that the writer encouraged out-of-the-box approaches, which is nice. The combats weren't too special, but they also weren't bad or out of balance. We also got a surprisingly capable NPC who tagged along with us, which is a nice touch.

Overall, I would say this is a mediocre adventure, but it has just enough nice touches to make it actually worth playing.

(I GMed this.)

While it seems promising, the adventure didn't really come together like I wanted to. There's a bit about making this either a horror scenario or a light-hearted romp, but it really isn't scary enough. There just isn't a feeling of dread present, I feel. While some encounters were pretty fun, the "boss," while thematically appropriate, just didn't feel connected to the place. Individual setpieces were pretty fun, they just didn't form a cohesive whole, I feel. Though maybe it's just a failing of me as a GM. Your mileage may vary.

(I played this.)

Note: I am good friends with the author, so I might be biased. I'll try to not let that influence my review, but just so you know.

This scenario has a lot of good things the previous scenarios in the series lacked. Good enemies, interesting environments, a general cohesion in the story, and one or two cool watercooler moments. Though the enemies aren't exotic, they do what they're supposed to do. Even the vehicle part was well worked out and felt exciting

It's not spectacular by any means, but it's a very solid scenario. Certainly better than the lacklustre previous two in this series. I'm doubting between giving it three or four stars, but since I gave the previous scenarios in the series three stars, I'll rate this four stars.

(I played this.)

Title says everything. It really feels like a scenario summary was handed to the author, who proceeded to deliver exactly that and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad scenario by any means, but it just feels... safe. No especially spicy combats, difficult skill challenges, or memorable story. Not that every scenario needs to be a five-star thrill-ride, but I just want to point out that this feels... formulaic. I found the monster on the cover to be pretty interesting as far as combats go, so that's a plus.

All in all, decent adventure. Nothing especially noteworthy, but also not as bad as other scenarios I've played.

(I played this.)

Seems like every year we're going to get a Zo! adventure, and while it still has enough flair to carry the story, the formula's getting a bit stale. Especially now that it's back-to-back combats without any skill challenges in between.

That said, this is a repeatable, and I must say that the random elements do keep it fresh. I had a quick peek and there's quite a bit of variety between enemies and random hazards. Some are more interesting than others, but there's certainly a variety of cool things to fight.

Four stars for the repeatable content, two stars for story and lack of skill challenges.

(I GMed this.)

From a GM perspective, this could use some work. There's a whole lot of descriptive text and flavour text that could either have been regular box text, or gone to actually fleshing out the scenario more. Several paragraphs are in this in-between state of being descriptive while not being actually helpful.

From a player perspective, it feels more like three separate mini-missions that are only loosely tied together. There's an overarching plot, but it's really one-and-done that's probably all just setup for a next adventure, without any satisfying conclusion of its own.

The combats and skill challenges feel fine. Nothing spectacular, but also nothing really bad. There's some fun creatures in here. It also ran pretty fast, but that might just have been because of a four-player party.

(I played this.)

There are some rough patches in this scenario, not going to lie. And honestly, we avoided some of those by clever thinking and good luck. But even without that, I don't think I'd rate it as low as others do. Yes, there are some weird things such as sounds and smells in a vacuum. Some things happen just for the sake of plot. But I can overlook that. Maybe a bit immersion-breaking, but not a total negative. Yes, that one encounter is maybe a bit ridiculous, but not to the level others make it out to be.

Other than that, I found it pretty enjoyable. I don't really see how it's "beginner-friendly," though, but that could be just me. Showing you several hazards without giving you any methods of dealing with them isn't beginner-friendly. Anyway, other than that, it's a decent scenario. Nothing mind-blowing, but also not as egregious as others make it seem.